And Miles to Go
by JoanyChan
Summary: Their losses pile like snow. Fourteen years after the deaths of their beloved sensei and their parents, Team 10 finds itself wandering in the woods of withered promises and frozen friendships. But perhaps, if they reach for one another, they can continue to walk towards warmer days. InoShikaCho.
1. Whose woods these are

**1. Whose woods these are**

Taijutsu was the worst.

It was the only thing on the young girl's after she spun and kicked for the umpteenth time only to see training dummy still stand with its fake eyes taunting her. She wiped the sweat off her forehead and pinned back the stray strands of dark brown hair before calling over to the tree nearby.

"Hey, Shika-niisan. Do something here, I can't knock this thing over at all."

She was responded only by the chirping of insects that grew louder as the sun began to set. Sarutobi Kayoko sighed and walked over.

There, lying at the trunk of the tree was a man with his black hair tied in a ponytail.

"Stop sleeping! This is a serious problem here! Are you listening?"

The sight of the twelve year old's naturally crimson eyes glaring over him blocked his view of the clouds, prompting him to reply, "You'll do fine. Relax."

Kayoko incredulously watched her trainer get up and begin heading back towards the village center. She ran after him, "What does _that _mean? Relax? My test is tomorrow!"

You're going to pass, quit worrying. Taijutsu's not that important anyway." He casually waved it off.

"Then what do you do when you're facing an enemy and you don't have enough chakra left to do anything else but taijutsu?" She challenged.

He considered it for a moment before finally replying with a straight face, "Run."

"What?! Be serious! That's not what you'd really do!" She complained, hitting his arm with a fist as they entered the town of New Konohagakure.

"Well, I am a natural coward." He shrugged as he pulled out a lighter from his traditional green flak jacket and dangled a cigarette from his mouth. After drawing in a breath, he coughed and immediately tossed it aside—it was as if he was first-time smoker; only in reality, he made a daily routine out of it.

Kayoko snuck a glance to the taller man by her side whom has always been Shika-niisan to her since she learned how to talk. As always, he had his head characteristically tilted upwards in the slightest manner. It was the way his eyes tiredly observed the sky that caused her to wonder whether Nara Shikamaru really was as lazy as he made himself seem. Although he never talked much about his past, she liked to believe that he was really a great shinobi. After all, he was the first boy she had ever kissed (on the cheek of course; she was six, it was one of those childhood crush phases). And ever since he had easily jumped up the highest tree in the village to help carry her down (the consequence of her accepting an overambitious dare), she had been determined to wear a forehead protector like his. Their age difference (and his often nonchalant personality) made him more of a brother, but she still had this secret habit of imagining him as the father she had never personally met. Her mother told her that Shika-niisan was placed under her father's instruction as a genin, and she had seen enough of her father's old photographs to notice a sort of similarity between the two that she could not pinpoint.

She attempted to figure out what he saw in the clouds, as she had for several years. "Hey, Shika-niisan," She looked brightly towards the sky, "if I pass I can go on missions with you, right?"

Shikamaru looked at this girl with scarlet eyes that appeared as orange-gold in the light and slightly wavy, brown hair tied in a low ponytail; she could've been the spitting image of her mother, had it not been for the way she smiled and irately frowned with changing moods, which reminded him almost too much of her father. Whereas he had a shadow that stretched far behind him, she walked on a sunset lit ground that extended ahead.

He used to be like that. Once.

"You'll probably end up being with your team more." He responded,

A corner of her lip pulled down in slight disappointment. Another expression inherited from her father. "But what if I don't even like my team mates? I don't have to tied to them all the time, do I?"

"_**Why**__? __**Why **__do I have to be with __**you **__two? Why can't be tied to Sasuke-kun instead?"_

"_We'll be okay. Asuma-sensei said that we just have to stay tied together like this for two days, then we'll pass, Ino-chan." His friend chomped on a potato chip._

"_Don't call me by first name, Akamichi." The blonde on his right snapped as the three of them walked (she stormed) out of the Academy ground with their hands tied together by their forehead protectors._

"_But why not? We've known each other for a long time because of our parents. And now we're team mates too." The boy on his left asked with a full mouth, trying to manage eating out of a bag with the only free hand he had. No matter the situation, he had a snack and an affable outlook at hand. _

"_There is absolutely __**no **__point in this test!" She groaned in frustration._

_Her sudden stop yanked the two boys back. _

"_Oh. My. __**God**__." The stricken look in her sky blue eyes seemed as if they saw something ominously horrible. "No...no. No. No. No. No!" _

"_What, Ino-chan? What's wrong?" The boy asked._

"_Do __**all **__the teams go through the same test? Because if they do, that means Forehead and Sasuke-kun are tied. __**Together!**__ Do you __**know **__what this means?!"_

_If he could face palm, he would. Unfortunately, being the one in the middle with both his hands tied, he could only look up at the clouds and wish he were in more peaceful places._

"_Um...no?"_

"_My life sucks! It's all over! What if they spend so much time together that Sasuke-kun gets delusional and actually falls for her forehead? I'm doomed! I'm going to be a widow for life!" _

_Now she was wailing melodramatically. Telling her that regardless of whatever disturbing images were playing through her head, she was forgetting to add Naruto into the equation, was useless—she was lost in her own tirade. _

"_Could you just, be quiet for one minute, woman?" He finally said, after deciding that investing in asking her to shut up might yield better results than enduring her flame of complaints for hours. _

"_Well __**I **__actually want to __**do **__something about this, Nara!" She shot back._

_He sighed through the headache caused by her screeching, "Just wait it out."_

"_Yeah, Ino-chan. This is supposed to be a team bonding test."_

_After wandering around for an hour, they finally collapsed on a patch of grass and watched the sun sink towards the horizon, covering the grass before them in a path of gold._

"_Do you __**ever **__stop eating?" She tiredly asked the other boy._

_Before his weight-sensitive childhood friend could respond, she turned to him, "And you." She searched for a complaint as she watched him lie nonchalantly on the ground. "Do you have __**any **__motivation at all?"_

"_Well, you're bossy, Ino-chan." The boy on his left offered in this sharing of personality traits._

"_Shut up."_

_Silence._

"_We really are going to be stuck together forever." The overweight member finally said the thought that had sunk in entire trio._

_He sarcastically replied, "Great. It'll be like this, except without the forehead protectors." _

"Well, it depends." The chuckle that escaped him raised her suspicions.

"What? What's so funny?" She eyed him dubiously.

"Nothing."

"Tell me!" She elbowed him.

He responded, "Alright. I'll tell you...when you beat me at shogi."

As they approached a traditional home on the street and he walked on ahead, she whined. "What?! That's not fair! You know that I can't beat you at shogi"

"You came close yesterday." A woman appeared at the front door, her smile framed by long, wavy black hair.

"But that's because I cheated and Shika-niisan let me get away with it." Her daughter pointed out.

Yuuhi Kurenai laughed as her daughter took off her shoes and entered the home. "How was she today, Shikamaru-kun?"

"She'll do fine. She's just nervous." He replied.

"Hey, Shika-niisan, are you staying for dinner with us?" Kayoko peer over.

"No. Not tonight."

"Why not? I was going to take you on in shogi too..." She pouted.

"Weren't you too busy worrying about your exam?" He teased.

"Hmph."

She turned and left the two adults standing at the doorway.

"Tomorrow is the big morning for you too, isn't it?" The older woman asked softly.

"Yeah. I guess so." He said, perhaps somewhat unexcitedly as he stuck his hands in his pockets.

She reassured him, maybe even with the same older-sisterly words she used last year, or the year before that, "You'll get the promotion. It would be ridiculous for the village council not to. You should've become a jonin a long time ago."

"Uh, yeah. Thanks." His eyes turned to a corner on the ground, avoiding her eyes just like he avoided the topic of conversation. When did looking forward become a problem for him?

After leaving the household, he walked down a relatively empty street enveloped in violet-evening, finding himself unable to keep his eyes directly ahead once again. Instead, he observed the buildings on the sides of the road with weariness suspended over his expression. Although the aftermath of the Fourth Shinobi War left the Konohagakure as acres of destruction, the two years' worth of both physical and governmental reconstruction was impressively efficient due to cooperation between the allied nations that bonded over the shared tragedies. The village that resulted was New Konogakure. Modeled after its pre-war counterpart, Yakiniku Q was still that the corner of the street, with the same sound of sizzling meat radiating from its entrance; next to it was still the small building that housed the Shogi Society filled with the sounds of playing pieces against wood. And then there was the Yamanaka Flower Shop, which he always passed en route to his small apartment with horrible rent.

They said that they used the same, old blueprints for New Konohagakure. Only there were still differences.

He knew that the barbeque shop no longer sells the same sweet-and-spicy sauce that his "big boned" best friend used to order in excess (which caused their sensei, who always paid, to cringe) because the only man who had the recipe moved to another village. The Shogi Society is filled with new faces that reminded him of the fact that he was very much 29 years old.

The flower shop didn't even sell flowers anymore. Instead, it stood abandoned, as it had been ever since the last surviving daughter of the family packed up her bags and ran off ten years ago. Now, it was the new generation of children's favorite haunt; he knew that the Academy students liked to have their test of courage after exam day in the building, believing that the ghost of a woman lurked about.

And this was the same place where everyone would go to buy bouquets—where a blonde kunoichi at the cashier stand would inform them on whether they should buy roses or carnations in her bossy, matter-of-fact voice.

All these little changes just kept building up. He wondered if there would be a day when this village would eventually become completely foreign woods.

His hand subconsciously reached for the earring stud pierced in his ear.

* * *

_Nara Shikamaru,_

_We regret to inform you that your application to become a jonin has been denied. We encourage you to try again next year._

_Sincerely,_

_The Konoha Village Council_

Staring at the scroll delivered to him via delivery hawk, he tried to gauge his own emotions.

He wondered which he should be more concerned over: the fact that he was hardly surprised or the fact that he felt as bland as he did every morning.

"Still a no?" His chunin colleague asked when he noticed him walk into the instructor's room of the Academy.

He shrugged as he picked up the papers for the exam that he was assigned to proctor as the instructor of strategy class for Academy students. "It would've been a bother anyway. Too many missions."

"Those power hungry bastards. Probably all scared of that brain of yours overtaking them." Another teacher slapped him on the back in conciliation, "Wanna go for sake this evening?"

He considered the offer, but then remembered the overweight man who now worked at the sushi and sake shop as a bartender and replied:

"Nah, it's fine."

Once again, after watching the students leave school grounds in a wide range of moods (some high-fiving each other in confidence, others moping), he was walking the streets alone in the dark. He wondered if he could calculate the number of days he had repeated this routine. Of course, his days had changed slightly overtime.

The first time he received the scroll, he was greeted by a group of nine other ninja around his age. It was meant to be a surprise celebration party; his two team mates had the streamers all ready to throw at him. Instead, it turned into a consolation period.

Then the second time, they all drank for the first time to the promotion of four of his peers. But he opted out of the alcohol, hardly in the mood. And the third time, six of them had missions to fulfill as new jonin. By the seventh time, all of them were busy with their separate paths—all too preoccupied to look back at their crossroads except for him, who had nothing better to do, as the only one who was still a chunin.

And for some reason, he kept filling out another application for the next year.

He was about the pass the abandoned flower shop until a sudden shout and crash of a shattered pot interrupted the still night. Remembering that Academy students were probably in there, perhaps Kayoko included, he dashed towards the back door.

"Shi-shi-shi-kamaru-sensei!" A student clumsily ran into him, accompanied by a group of other boys. Perhaps it was the full moon that hung in the sky unadulterated by a single cloud, but their faces seemed drained of any color.

"Kojiro. Takumi. What's going on?"

"Gh-ghost! There's a cur-cursed gh-ghost in there!" One of them stammered before running off faster than he had ever run in training.

He was hardly one to believe in spirits. Not even when he was the boy's age. But he suspected that something was in there.

_Shit. Kayoko_.

He swore and stealthily slipped into the building, using the shadows to his advantage. It appeared that the rooms were empty until he entered the greenhouse. Filled with pots of stiff, bare flower stems and dried leaves, crumbling from a decade without water, the area's expanse of open windows allowed it to be almost completely covered in moonlight. Noticing a lurking figure ahead, he hid behind the largest potted tree he could discern and made a quick hand sign, trying to manipulate a tiny source of shadow to stretch out.

His concentration broke along with the shadow the moment a kunai came close to nicking his cheek. When the blade shattered a pot across from him, he realized that it had an explosive tag attached to it.

_Damn!_

He jumped out of the way, leaving him open to an army of more blades and throwing stars. Landing on the ground with a skid, he noticed from an angle of light that the weapons were aligned in pattern, connected by thin wire. A light blue chakra snaked at a rapid rate towards him.

As defensive reflex, he used the shadows of the kunai to similarly capture his anonymous opponent before the chakra rope could take its toll.

"Godamnit!"

At hearing the complaining female voice cut through the air, he recognized the chakra technique. Walking out of the shrubbery and following the trail of weapons, he found himself standing face to face with an all too familiar woman, despite the ten years that had past.

Still stuck in his shadow justu and surrounded dirt spilling out of smashed pottery, she stood and stared at him with a clamped jaw. Silver light streaked off her long blonde hair as her blue eyes met his with a flicker of recognition.

And then they were in the still spotlight of the moon.

Finally, out of all the greetings he could've used, he mustered the only thought stuck in his throat.

"Ino."

* * *

**This idea actually came to me when I had a spasm of Naruto nostalgia. I am in a phase of love for the original Konoha 12 and their friendships. It hit me that while Team 7 has the main characters, Team 10 has suffered their fair share of tragedies as well. So this is my tribute to InoShikaCho (and Asuma)—to their friendship that got them through the hardships they have endured, despite the fact that one would expect their relationship to be dysfunctional as hell based on their contrasting personalities.**

**The chapter titles and the title of the story itself are based off of Robert Frost's "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening". **

**Thanks for reading! Of course, please review!**


	2. Fill up with snow

**2. Fill up with Snow**

They stood there in awkward silence, a few meters apart—a seemingly small distance that disguised the years outstretched between them. He still had the same natural slouch in his tall stature and expression on his face that made him look constantly tired. She still wore her hair with a long bang covering one eye and stood with a hand on her hip, impatient as always. Everything was the same.

Only everything was different.

"And here I thought I was going to be raped or something. It's just you, Shikamaru." She replied casually.

"Um...Well yeah." The years of lost contact left him unsure of how to respond to her flippant remark.

"So, how long do you plan on keeping me in this damned shadow jutsu?"

"Oh. Right. Sorry." Realizing that his hands were still in position, he relaxed and allowed his arms to fall back to his side. The shadow receded.

She knelt down to pick the pieces of broken pottery back up. Bright red welled up on one of her fingers after she cut it against a sharp edge. She paused to stare at it for a moment, as if remembering something. Then, almost too suddenly, she ignored it. Without giving him even a glance, she muttered:

"Damned idiots. Having the nerve to trespass and then running off screaming like kids."

"Well, they were kids."

He wondered if he should also tell her that they did this every year. And the ghost stories surrounding the place.

"Here." He ripped off a strip of cloth bandage and offered to help with her minor cut.

"Thanks." She grabbed it from him, opting to wrap it herself instead.

Conversation starting had never been his forte, since he was typically too lazy to bother with feeling uncomfortable. But tonight, he was dependent on the woman next to him, hoping that she would break through silence as easily as she used to nag him about the littlest things.

But there were no "How are you?"s. Or "What's happened over these years?"s.

He cleared his throat, "Um. So, you're back."

The stupidity of his words hit him after he spoke, which was a millisecond far too late.

"Yeah."

"Are you just visiting?" He carefully asked.

A tuft of her blonde-turned-silver-in-the-moonlight hair puffed upwards from a casual snort. "Oh no, I'm staying for a while."

"What about your job?"

"I quit." Before he could say anything else, she almost too quickly continued, "It was too stressful anyway. The med-nins up there are so uptight. Nothing fun about it."

Perhaps his memories had skewed his perception, but he wondered if her breezy attitude had always made her seem distant. The blonde in his recollections had constantly asked their sensei whether he and Kurenai-sensei were dating, and stalked Uchiha Sasuke just to find out that he hated tomatoes.

But there was nothing inquisitive about this woman before him. So he offered:

"A lot of people over here switched job too. Sakura's a village ambassador now. I think Hinata's stepping down from being head of the Hyuga clan for a while. Uh, and Kiba quit—

"Yeah, it's been a long time, right?" She cut him off.

He looked up, trying to read from her expression whether he truly was the only buried in snow, frozen in times past.

That was when he noticed the scar on her ear from a closed piercing.

* * *

The problem with midnight was that everything was still.

Yamanaka Ino restlessly lied on her bed after spending an hour sweeping the grey and dead flower petals. Surprisingly enough, she could still identify each of the withered blossoms, including the cosmos that she received on her 16th birthday from her father—

She decided to clean the household upstairs as well. Only she saw the old tea set on the table and started thinking about her mother's chrysanthemum tea. And then she remembered weekend afternoons not paying attention to the retellings of her father's missions that she should've listened to.

So she threw the teapot out the window and heard it shatter in concert with an alley cat's hiss. Then she tossed the heirloom flower vase. And her mother's old dresses. And hair brushes.

And when that didn't work, she rearranged all the furniture.

By the time she was done, she was exhausted as anyone would be at four in the morning without sleep. And once again, she tried sleeping.

But then she could feel all the photograph eyes watching her. Although she had stored the frames deep underneath her sock drawer, in which anything that went in never found its way out, familiarity allowed the pictures to materialize. The bossy teenaged girl in chastising a peer her age in mid-yawn, the overweight boy trying to act as a diplomat, and the older man grinning at the antics—they were all there, surrounding her, never leaving her alone.

In that moment, she truly considered heading to the Taiyougakure again, just as she had done a decade ago. As the capital village, joint created by the Five Great Shinobi Nations who strove for maximum, cooperative peace after the devastating war, it was much more busy at night. With larger businesses and an amalgam of citizens from different nations, there was always something to distract her, even when she wasn't on duty as a medical ninja.

But who was she kidding? She couldn't go back there.

She sat up, got dressed, and headed towards the nearest bar. She refused to watch her life fill with heavy snow of memories long gone and leave her without room to breathe.

If time wouldn't move, then she would.

The smell of alcohol never sat well with him. Being the bland person that he was, he could never stand any beverage other than water. Juice was too sweet, tea was too bitter, and in this case, sake was too strong.

He stared at the clear liquid in the cup, trying to muster the motivation to bring it to his lips. Instead, he managed to greet the bartender.

"Hey, Chouji."

"Oh, hey Shikamaru."

Both pretended that they had just noticed each other upon chance.

For some reason, he could not bring himself to look Akamichi Chouji in the eyes. It wasn't that he had probably gained more weight. Or that his round face seemed paler. It was just that he never knew his forehead was that wide.

Who knew that the lack of a forehead protector could change a person's appearance that much?

"How's it going?" Chouji asked, able to recall that the best friend he once had lacked the talent of starting conversation. But then again, he wasn't comfortable either.

"Fine. You?"

Chouji was well aware that he was wearing an extra fifteen pounds and a restaurant uniform. Yet he replied with a smile, "Great." And switched the topic, "How are the students?"

He noticed the tired look on Shikamaru's face and suddenly caught himself, "I mean, if you're still a—

"I am. It's not a big deal." Shikamaru cut him off.

Separated by a countertop, they were opposite bulbs of an hourglass laid on its side, sand sitting still on both ends. They secretly wondered what happened to chips underneath cumulus clouds and easy grins while ditching practice.

Finally, Chouji spoke, "Well, you must be busy, though." He tried a laugh, "You never show up here."

Shikamaru mused over the man's words, playing them over in his mind. He had to ask himself whether the tone was meant to sound like an accusation. One for passing by the sushi and sake shop every evening without stopping by to visit. One for days turn into months turn into years since he had tried talking to the man who was once the boy he ditched tag for. One for doing all this knowingly, for he just could not bear to see that forehead and confirm change.

"It's alright. Not nearly as busy as they used to be." Shikamaru started, trying to find words that could mend time, "The team missions and all... they used to be such a bother."

Chouji's hands paused in the middle of wiping a glass.

"Remember that lord we escorted?"

He set the glass down, confirmed of his suspicions for his old team mate's sudden visit. "That was a long time ago. But I'm just a bartender now."

"You also happen to be a jonin." Shikamaru pointed out.

"Shikamaru. I'm not a shinobi anymore. I stopped taking missions years ago." He tried his most affable smile.

But despite the years that have passed between them, Shikamaru can still see a hint of the steely barrier that Chouji's expression had set. Staring at his hands on the counter, he quietly mentioned,

"Ino's back."

"That's great. How is she?" Chouji asked. It could've been as if he were asking about some distant relative he had never met.

"Fine. I guess. And you?" He forgot that he had already asked the last part. Or maybe he just wanted to try asking one more time.

"Fine. No, great." The bartender smiled with a face weathered by worn confidence and lost boyhood brazenness as he repeated his empty lie,

"I'm great."

* * *

"We have a slight problem here."

Shikamaru, along with a group of chunin instructors, looked up from the paperwork and files spread out over the tabletop as a duo entered the Academy conference room. Application pictures of the students who had recently passed their exams were sorted in groups of three.

"What?" He asked.

The young jonin with spiky brown hair scratched his head, "Well, we're short a jonin."

"Wait, I thought we had all of them set."

"We did," The jonin, no older than twenty five, replied, "but one of them dropped out last minute."

Accompanying him was another ninja with characteristically prominent eyebrows, who explained, "Hinata-san just stepped down from her position as head of the Hyuuga clan due to her...uh, circumstances. She won't be in duty for at least nine months, so Hanabi-san has taken her position and can no longer act as a jonin advisor."

Shikamaru remembered recent rumors about Hinata and noted it yet as another proof of his age.

"Well, Lee, for now you're still getting Umino, Shiranui, and Uzuki." And Konohamaru, you're taking Inuzuka, Hyuuga, and Kurama."

He sighed in annoyance at this sudden wrench in plans, "Now we just need to find jonin for Sarutobi, Kamizuki, and Hagane."

"Don't worry we already found one for you guys." Lee reassured.

Shikamaru looked at his green jumpsuit underneath the flak jacket. If there was anything he could at least count on, it was Rock Lee's attire. Which did not say much and was hardly reassuring at all.

"Who is it?"

"Yamanaka Ino!" Lee proudly announced, "Did you know that she just came back yesterday?"

It took an incredible amount of effort for Shikamaru not to knock the table full of all his early morning paperwork over.

* * *

_What the hell._

It was the only thought entangled in his mind as he accompanied Kayoko down the street, after passing by the empty Yamanaka Flower Shop and catching a hint of long blonde hair behind the entrance of the bar.

"Hey, Shika-niisan, did you hear me?"

"Huh? Yeah." He absentmindedly replied.

The girl glared, "Fine. What did I say?"

"You were asking how you should wear something or whatever."

She sighed, exasperated, "It was my forehead protector. And I solved that problem myself _five _minutes ago!"

He finally took his eyes off the crowd around them and looked at her, "Oh, really?"

The swirl insignia gleamed in the last second of daylight, with the band wrapped around her left arm.

After the sun completely set, the lanterns from nearby business shops illuminated her grin, "See? Does it look familiar?"

"Yeah."

The smile on his face felt wrong, an expression of pride twisted with a sense of shame that burned from the metal protector on his arm—it was a pain similar to that of a scab; dull and browned from time, a scar that hardly drew attention anymore but bled the moment it was picked.

He wondered if the day will ever come, when this girl will no longer have to look up to talk to him, when she will walk ahead of him and all he will be able to see is her back.

"So, as I was saying, are you going stay over our place this time?"

"Uh, no. I'm busy." He said as the traditional house came into view. He nodded in greeting to the woman at the door.

"Again? How am I ever going to beat you at shogi if you never give me a chance to play against you?" She whined, "I'm never going to hear any of your stories."

"Sorry. Another time." He gave a distracted smile and left.

He rarely had a sense of direction or urgency, but tonight he knew exactly where he was going. Instead of taking his time, he walked right into the bar and confronted the customer at the counter.

"What the hell." He finally was able to say.

"Hey Shikamaru." The woman turned from her drink, "What's up?"

"Why the hell did you apply to be Kayoko's jonin instructor?"

"Who the fuck is Kayoko?"

He looked at her, incredulous. She had been there at the 1st birthday of their sensei's daughter. "Sarutobi Kayoko. Asuma-sensei's daughter."

"Oh her? I forgot about her."

"What?"

"Oh who cares, I have my own life too. It's not like I'm supposed obsess over everything in the past like you do."

He wondered if this was supposed to be a blatant insult. Frustrated, he gritted, "Anyway, just drop out. I can find another jonin."

"Why? Because you can't trust me?"

He noted her slightly unfocused blue eyes, "No, it's not that. It's just—that's not the point. Why are you so set on being a sensei?"

"Why are you so against it?"

"What's your problem?"

Even if the alcohol was blurring her vision, she could still feel his eyes on the drink in her hand, trying to read into something deeper. She snapped, "What's yours?"

"Ino..." He started.

But she knew that tone. It meant seriousness, sincerity—all the things she did not want. And so she sneered, "Oh, I get it. Little Shikamaru is jealous."

It took him aback, "Wait, what?"

"You can't bear the fact that _I'm _the one who's going to be teaching Sarutobi. Me, not you, even though you were the one who used to say shit like 'I'm going to fucking awesome mentor to Asuma's kid'. But now I'm the jonin and you're still a chunin at the fucking Academy, where all your students just leave you in the goddamned dust once they graduate."

Tonight was certainly a night of firsts, for never had he felt anger of this intensity seize him. Sure, Ino had always been critical. She was a female, like all others, who ruthlessly nagged at his faults. But today, her breezy, devil-may-care attitude pricked something new inside of him.

He was pissed to no ends.

"You know what? This is bullshit. Talk to me when you're not drunk."

And he left, without denying a single thing she had said.

Alone, slouched over the counter, she took one last swig at her sake before slammimg it down, "Fuck you. I don't have any problems. My life's fucking fine." She waved her hand for another drink.

The hefty bartender hesitated before pouring another cup and sliding it over. When he had first noticed the blonde woman earlier this evening, he made it his goal to look down as much as possible so that she would not recognize him. It was odd, how one conversation could strip away all the convincing himself of satisfaction he had done, leaving him bare with self-consciousness. But after eavesdropping on the argument between her and the tall man with a black ponytail, he realized that his worrying was unwarranted; the woman was too intoxicated to be attentive to her surroundings.

He watched her flirt with another man at the counter, batting her eyelashes and laughing loudly in slurred words. She left with the stranger with a smile on her face. On a cursory level, she could've been the same, eager 17 year old who used to check her complexion in a compact mirror whenever she noticed a boy that caught her eye. Only he knew that the expression was laden with goodbyes to shadow tag training in the sunset and farewells to bickering during summer-cricket evenings on the way home from missions.

He knew that expression well. It was one that scared the man who stormed out of the shop. And one that stared at him in every reflection.

* * *

**Taiyougakure means "village hidden by the sun". I chose "sun" because it's the center of our solar system...which I guess could tie it back to being the "center" or capital of the Five Shinobi Nations. But if that only makes sense to me (which seems to happen often with a lot of things), consider the name arbitrary.**

**Mention of the other Konoha 12 is probably bound to show up in my other future fics; I plan on making written tributes for the other teams as well. So yes, if any of you caught it, you will most likely hear about how Hinata's "circumstances" came about...in another fiction coming to soon to your computer screens (you can consider this blatant advertising for future projects). **

**All the Academy students mentioned towards the end do indeed carry the surnames of canon characters (it took a lot of Narutopedia scouring to determine them), although I can't promise that I'll be able to bring up all of them. **

**As always, I appreciate any and all reviews! **


	3. Between the woods and frozen lake

**3. Between the Woods and Frozen Lake**

Yet another foreign ceiling. This one had a broken fan that oscillated in slow, choked spins.

Ino squinted at the morning light that beamed through a crack in the closed curtains. The splintering pain in her head came all too fast. Midmorning was an ungodly period for her—hangovers never faded until afternoon for her.

She gathered the energy to climb out of bed and find the bathroom. In solely her undergarments, she fixed her hair and redid her makeup through fuzzy headaches she was well used to.

The man on the other side of the mattress mumbled something sleepily. She ignored him, digging through the mess in the room. His shirt...her skirt...his pants...

Finally, she managed to reclaim all the clothing articles she remembered wearing last night.

"...so early..." She thought she heard the muffled voice grumble from underneath the blanket.

Of course, she didn't reply. She never did, not even in the Taiyougakure. Talking to them in the morning would mean "see you tomorrow"s and pretty soon "see you forever"s. So she preferred waking up to a new ceiling every morning.

Men—she had never kept one. But they kept her distracted, filled up a space in her mind with fleeting thoughts.

She noticed the scroll painting of sakura blossoms on the wall.

"_Don't lose to Sakura in love." _

Pushing the thought as far as she could to the smallest corner of her mind, she snorted. Well fuck that. Sakura, Sasuke, they were all in the past. Hardly relevant.

"_How long do you plan on disturbing my peace?" _

_She looked over from the training dummy with strands of hair escaping from her growing ponytail and mascara slightly smeared with sweat. Glaring at the her two team mates who sat idly on the meadow ground, she replied impatiently to the boy in the gray t-shirt who stared at the clouds, "Until I get this ninjustsu right."_

_Shikamaru and she tried the same handsign again on another innocent deer in the distance. She collapsed to the ground._

_He was thrown forward by the sudden weight of her body against his back. _

"_Man. She's heavy."_

_He jolted when he felt her tiredly elbow him._

"_Shut up."_

"_Oh, you're still here." _

"_No shit." She replied, frustrated. _

_They sat there back to back, watching the deer dash off into the woods. _

"_Ino, shouldn't we call it a day? You've been at it for three hours." The other boy said, his round face bored and tired. _

"_No." _

_A loud growl came from the brown-haired boy's stomach as he insisted, "But you're already really goo—_

"_Stop plucking those flowers, Chouji." She snapped, "This is why you two are impossible. Here I am, working my ass off to make sure Sakura doesn't get Sasuke, and you two are doing nothing at all. Do you guys even have __**any **__goals in life?"_

_Chouji stopped to consider it, "Ummm...protect people?"_

"_That's so vague." She criticized._

"_Live a normal life." The boy behind her simply replied._

"_What the hell is that supposed to mean?"_

_Shikamaru shrugged, "Marry an average girl. Have two kids. A girl first. Then a boy. Retire and spend my time playing shogi. Die of old age before my wife."_

_After a silence, she burst out in laughter. It probably wasn't good for her stamina, which was already reaching an all time low after rigorous training, but she couldn't help it. _

"_What's so funny?"_

"_It's just such... a specific dream for someone like you." She wiped a tear from her eye. That, and she couldn't help but find it odd how their goals were relatively similar, "I mean, you haven't even shown any effort in trying to get a girlfriend."_

"_It's too bothersome. Women are all the same, nagging you all the time."_

"_You're hopeless. Don't you at least have a type?"_

"_Not really. Choosing things takes too much mental effort."_

_A gentle breeze shook the flowering tree above them and a sakura blossom fell into her lap. Her failure to master her ninjustu technique even after hours of practice set in. She picked up the flower and stared at it with somewhat clouded blue eyes. _

"_The sakura are real pretty today." She softly said, mostly to herself._

"_Nah. They block my view of the clouds. I prefer cosmos."_

_Before she could ask about his cryptic statement, Shikamaru sighed and got up. Not expecting his movement, she fell backwards on to the ground with a thump. Rubbing her head, she sharply complained, "Ow! What the hell was that for?"_

"_Unfortunately for me, I'm the one responsible for spotting you in our formation. If I don't catch you when you get that jutsu right this time, I'll never hear the end of your complaints." _

_He opened his palm and dropped a single purple flower into her hands._

She closed the door behind her without a backwards glance.

Maybe she would run a pottery shop instead. Flowers were such childish things. They all eventually withered in the end anyway.

* * *

The trio stared into the sun that was already too high in the sky.

Kayoko leaned against the tree, begrudgingly agreeing with the exasperation overhanging her other two, new team mates.

"Hey, when is she going to show up? We've been here for two hours." Hagane Jin twirled a kunai.

Kamizuki Yukito replied in his matter-of-fact tone, "You know Ino-sensei. When she says nine in the morning, she means twelve in the afternoon."

She had defended their sensei when they waited for her in a morning hour so early that the moon was still bright in the sky—anxious for their final graduation exam only to watch her arrive a good four hours after the arranged time. Then she accused Jin and Yukito of being sexist after they declared that Konohamaru-sensei would've been better, all while they stood in the rain with their sensei as a no-show for their first training session. As an aspiring kunoichi, she was excited to have a female senior to look up to. Ino-sensei looked really pretty and strong, with her long blonde hair and striking blue eyes. In fact, she imagined that her sensei was the type to mercilessly take charge over her male team mates during missions.

But now, as they were (once again) waiting for their first mission, she found herself wondering why Shika-niisan couldn't just lead them instead.

Jin lost control of his blade, sending it across the air and nearly slicing off the end of her ponytail.

"Whoops."

"You almost cut my hair off, you jerk!" With her last strand of patience snapped, she reached for a shuriken in her bag.

She would've gotten the satisfaction of testing her accuracy and scaring her obnoxious team mate had a blonde woman not casually stepped in between them.

"Alright guys, let's not get cranky here. It's your first mission! Look alive!" She smiled breezily, ignoring their irascible expressions.

One of the boys grumbled as they headed towards the Nara forest, "Easy for you to say, you're not the one who waited in the sun for hours."

"It's just disarming a few animal traps. Not even a big deal." Another one grumbled.

While she pretended not to hear them, Ino wondered why all rookie genin possessed the same ambitiousness. It was as if all children thought that they could save the world by birthright, that they were somehow invincible to the dangers that have killed the thousands of ninja—experienced, famous ones too—before them. How naive of them, of her old team, of the girl she used to be.

"Ha, you say that, but haven't you spent twenty minutes on that same snare?" Kayoko walked over to Jin, holding tens of undone nets and foothold traps while the latter struggled to handle his first contraption.

She watched the young girl calmly disable the complicated workings with blue eyes beginning to cloud with yesteryear. Kayoko. She told her sensei that it wasn't a good name when he mentioned it. He replied it was theoretical, which had worked for her two male team mates but had not fooled her; she had noticed how round Kurenai's stomach was becoming and that rosy glow of her face—if there was any gift nine months of pregnancy could offer, it was the blessing of a good complexion.

Of course, when she told him that she knew, he tried to cut her off with that favorite expression of his ("_Not right now!"_). But it was too late and the news was enough to make Chouji stop eating and Shikamaru lift his head up from the shogi board. They two eagerly congratulated Asuma-sensei that afternoon after a morning of training while he looked at the board in slight embarrassment.

"_Quit smoking it's bad for the kid! And make sure you put potted plants on the right side of Kurenai's room, it's good feng shui. And don't bring her to any loud places. And Kayoko? What kind of name is that?"_

"_It means 'child of a good generation'. We thought of it in hope that the child will inherit the Will of Fire."_

"_Ugh. That's so cheesy. Name her after a flower, like Sumire. You should name her Sumire!"_

"_Well, you don't know if it's going to be a girl, Ino. If it's a boy then you can't name him after a flower. What are you going to name him if it's a boy, Asuma-sensei?"_

"_Kasei."_

"_Don't bother. It's going to be a girl."_

"_Isn't that just wishful thinking? How would you know?"_

"_Trust me, Chouji, I'm sure of it."_

And as always with these kinds of things, she was right. And now the month-old baby she had admired in Kurenai-sensei's arms was a twelve year old girl with a teasing grin that she hadn't seen since Asuma-sensei tried to convince her to break her diet at Yakiniku Q.

This was no good. Training with these kids, going on D-rank missions to save deer...she didn't even like kids—this was all meant to keep her distracted. But instead, watching them was like being shoved backwards into times of petty arguments while lost during a mission.

The fact that the girl looked like her father didn't help either.

Maybe she shouldn't have had taken the job after all.

* * *

Akamichi Chouji liked to keep his eyes on the ground. It was a habit he developed years ago. He had thought that if he could only see his feet, he wouldn't be able to see the side glances of disappointment, smugness, pity, among all other things. Seven years should have been enough to wear away the self-consciousness. In fact, he wasn't quite sure why he was still keeping his eyes lowered. But he figured that it would take too much effort to fix. So he continued walking down the road on his way to work with his eyes on his feet, step by heavy step.

If he gave himself a few more years he might not even be able to see his feet anymore.

So much for dieting a little. Or dieting at all.

But he was fine with it. Just as he was fine with chopping sushi in the day and pouring sake at night. Fine with being removed from being successor of the head of his clan. Fine with his father's clouded eyes every once and a while when they crossed paths. He was fine without too—without the mild aroma of his sensei's smokes, the exasperated chastisement of his female team mate, the clouds reflected in his best friend's lackadaisical eyes.

He was never meant to be a shinobi in the first place.

There was no doubt about it. After all, back then he had to watch people he knew—people who had been talking about returning to their families after the mission—fall in foreign lands, never to see home again. Last words, friends with knees drenched in blood from kneeling, tears for unsaved comrades...

Now, he didn't have to deal with it anymore. Of course he was fine.

The direct route to work from his apartment required passing by the memorial stone on the Third Training Ground. As always, he took the longer way, choosing take wide trip near the outskirts of town. It was a good form of exercise. And a good way to avoid seeing all the names carved in stone, which reminded him of naive dreams and promises, snapped off tall trees and crushed underneath his weary feet.

A duo of shadows slipped past the corner of his corner of his eye, towards the direction of the Nara forest. It struck him as odd—it was common knowledge in the Konohagakure that the forest was off bounds unless permission was given by the clan that owned the region. But perhaps these two were foreigners, since the insignia on their forehead protectors were not familiar. On any other day, he probably would've ignored them, and their heavy chains and throwing knives.

But today was an odd day; he told himself that maybe they were just lost, and followed them into the woods just in case.

* * *

Tree shadows began to stretch and blanket the forest ground in darkness. The young genin looked up at the darkening sky.

"Hey, can we go now? We've checked the place about four times already."

Ino looked up at the boy who was the most hyperactive of the three, "Yeah sure, why not?"

Thinking that she was getting pretty bored herself anyway, she called over to the boy still circling idly around the same tree he had been an hour ago, "Hey Yukito, we're leaving."

"Wait. I think I see another one over there." The brown haired girl pointed out.

As she carefully observed the wire netting with her crimson eyes, her team mate watched impatiently, "Can't we just ignore it? So what if a deer gets caught? Survival of the fittest right?"

"The Nara clan will report us for not carrying out our mission completely." Yukito pointed out to his companion.

Kayoko ignored the complaining behind her, still trying to figure out the exact makings of the contraption. "That's odd, this one's different from all the others."

If the young girl did not recognize net, then the woman did. In noticing the barbs lining the crosses of wire, her blue eyes widened in memory of watching spots of blood bloom all over the bodies of heedless ninja who were swept up by the same kind of netting.

"Don't touch it!"

It was either the girl's curious finger or the kunai that suddenly flew from behind, but the net quickly shifted. Ino yanked the girl back as the clamping of the wires snapped in her ears.

"Was that just a human trap?!" She heard one of the boys panic, "What the hell—

"Calm down, Jin! Yukito! Kayoko! Get in formation!" Blinking right after the first surprise always got a person killed. Ino knew this and noticed a gleam in a tree in the corner. She quickly grabbed a kunai and knocked the spear of a chain out of its trajectory before it struck Jin's throat.

"Sneaky bastards." She gritted, frustrated with the fact that whoever was attacking them was too much of a coward for her to kick his ass properly. As an ex-medical ninja, her expertise was in avoiding direct-battle and healing—the latter of which she could hardly do at all anyway. And with the three inexperienced genin with her, she couldn't use her mind transfer justu on a nearby bird to locate where the assaulter was.

So she opted to use another kunai to throw back towards where the chain came from and reached for a back weapon pack.

"Jin! Behind you!" Kayoko shouted.

Ino noticed the spearhead disappear. _Shit! A transformed shadow clone?!_

The boy turned and found himself facing a shadow of a man in the air. He attempted to take his opponent out with a high kick, but had his leg caught by the chain in the man's hand. Thrown aside, Jin's body slammed into a tree with an earsplitting crack as his shoulder made impact with the trunk.

Judging by the sound, she guessed that he dislocated his shoulder at worst. Before she could attempt to finish the man off quickly to help her student, she heard another sharp screech of two blades in combat.

It only took one glance away to find her other student on the ground in a pool of blood that spread with threatening speed, spilling from his side where a kunai blade was buried. A foot came down on his stomach, causing him to cough up more blood that spattered on his face.

"Get off him!" The kunai blades in each of Kayoko's hands glowed with chakra as the girl desperately tried swiping at the accomplice ninja.

The large man easily dodged the attack and sent her flying with a kick. Before she could stand back up, the ninja walked over and mercilessly yanked her up by the collar of her shirt. Despite feeling lightheaded and being able to taste the blood trickling from her head, Kayoko made a last ditch attempt: she struggled to reach for a pocket tied to the back of her belt.

Using all the strength and chakra left in her, Kayoko launched a kunai into the air

"What the?—

The blade made it past the tree tops and exploded with a bright flash.

"You brat!" The man snarled and called over to his accomplice, "We got the kid. Let's go before someone comes."

Ino's opponent looked up from battle and jumped over her head. She reached out in attempt to stop them. So that what? So she could chase after them and have a student bleed to death? So she could fight them both single-handedly, even though taijutsu had always been her worst skill and at this point she could hardly catch her breath? The flak jacket she wore meant nothing. Her arm began to fall in defeat.

A large boulder suddenly crashed into the clearing. Both foreign men narrowly dodged the unexpected attack and the giant ball slammed into a tree.

"What the fuck was that?!"

But she knew that justu all too well, despite not having seen it in years.

"Ino, you help heal the other kid! I'll hold these guys off!"

She snapped back to attention and rushed over to Yukito. All she needed to do was put her hand over the wound and send chakra into the boy's body. It was a simple technique, one that she learned years ago, used countless of times on the battlefield.

And yet every inch of her body froze. She was trapped in ice. Her hand was over his body, but then the puddle of blood turned into a sea, and she could see his heart stopping and hear gulls crying _"you hit the wrong artery", "he's dead", "he's dead"..._

"_You killed him."_

"Ino!"

Chouji watched in horror as one of the ninja dodged past his punch and headed towards the blonde woman sitting by the injured child. Bounded in combat with the other ninja, he could only yell at Ino with no avail. She sat frozen, as if stuck in neck of an hourglass, choked by time to the point that she was blind to oncoming man—and the kunai in his hand.

The silver blade halted only millimeters from Ino's neck. Chouji noticed that the man seemed just as baffled as he was. Then he noticed the shadow.

"Shikamaru!"

A man with black hair tied in a ponytail walked out of the shadows of the tree, holding the man in place with his shadow technique. Even still, the man was close enough to Ino to cut her throat with the slightest struggle.

"Ino. Hurry up and move."

In the midst of trying to restrain the enemy, Shikamaru expected a snarky comment or indignant retort from the medical kunoichi. Instead, he found himself talking to a silent puppet with broken strings.

"Hey. Ino. Come on."

It was useless. She stayed, stuck in the neck of an hourglass, held still by time's hand wrapped around her neck.

He bit his lip and glanced over at Chouji's battle, noticing that his friend was clearly losing stamina. It was clear to him that the best solution to this situation was to use a mind transfer justu on the man in front of him. But right now he only had two out of the three sets of techniques he typically relied on. And with the sky this dark, the trees this tall, there were no shadows to manipulate. He needed to think. But with a blade that close to Ino and Kayoko slung over the other man's shoulder...

The angle of the day's last sun glare, almost completely covered by the tree tops, caught his attention. Realizing his luck, he directed to his attention to the tiny shaft of light that suddenly appeared, shining on Ino and drawing a line down near Chouji's opponent. The shadow that appeared beneath Ino's knees stretched rapidly towards the other ninja and wrapped around his ankle.

"Chouji! Now!" He kept his eye on the sun that was about to disappear within the next second.

The moment his friend barreled into the ninja and took the injured girl, the forest floor became completely dark. Shikamaru dashed for Ino and the boy, barely pushing them out of the way. He skidded across the ground with the two in his arms. Then, standing up, he faced the ninja with a kunai at hand.

"Ch." The man glared. Realizing that he and his partner were no longer in an advantageous position, the two disappeared into the night.

They left behind an aftermath of three barely unconscious children and a reunion of a team fractured by private weaknesses. Shikamaru took Kayoko, staring at the trail of dried blood on the side of her face, from Chouji's arms.

"Thanks."

Chouji nodded, noticing the darker-than-night shadows and tense jaw line on his friend's face. It was a foreign look for the nonchalant personality he was accustomed to.

But that wasn't the only unfamiliar scene. He looked over to the woman who sat on her knees staring at her shaking hands with a bang hiding half of her pale face. He wondered what in the past was haunting over her with such immense weight that would cause her blue irises to tremble as if they were seeing ghosts.

* * *

**A/N: It has been a while since I've tried my hand at action writing. Hmmm...hopefully it turned out okay. I'll get better at it, I (will try) to promise. **

**As always: I love reviews! (Hint hint, nudge nudge)**


	4. Darkest evening of the yaer

**4. Darkest Evening of the Year**

It was funny how things never seemed to really disappear. The last time Akamichi Chouji saw his sensei, he was lying so statue-still to the point that he no longer looked human. And he remembered that what he watched them bury that day wasn't just his body and the white lilies people in black brought, but proud smiles before setting suns that meant free dinners at Yakiniku Q and encouraging words that kept him huffing on during morning jogs.

But now all those mannerisms were breathing in this girl as she slept in the hospital bed. The peaceful expression on her face reminded him of Sunday afternoons watching Asuma-sensei and Shikamaru play shogi.

This was the girl he helped save. Her, along with two boys who rested across the room.

He wondered at his stomach; certainly it was growling, but there was something else inside keeping him in the dark hospital room. Perhaps it was an old, old sense of having protected this girl's muttering in the midst dreams of tomorrows. It was a warm feeling, better than anything he could've eaten.

But then there was that rock weighing down, one that felt heavier every time he looked at the bandage wrapped the girl's head and the cast on one boy's shoulder and the patches on the other boy's torso. This is what he let happen to them.

He looked at his hands, softened by the eight years during which the most dangerous thing he had held was a chef's knife. His palms closed, as if trying to reclaim something lost and clasp it tightly so as to reaffirm that it was indeed his.

His stomach growled.

Looking out the window, he wondered if the forest path he used to jog on was still the same.

* * *

Outside the same room in the hospital hallway, Nara Shikamaru stared at the tile grounds, remembering how much he hated its mint green color. Mixed in with the smell of antiseptic and the awareness that the patients were all being treated due to his own shortcomings, the floor sent a sickly heat up his neck.

He remained bowed, "I'm really sorry."

The woman looked at the man silently, wishing that words could help him take the blame off his shoulders. But she knew has known him for a long time, long enough to know that beneath his detached attitude was a person who took responsibility to its utmost seriousness.

"I should've gotten there sooner." He clenched his fists, tense from what-if's and what-then's.

She replied with a calm smile, "Shikamaru-kun, please look at me."

He hesitated before finally standing up straight again. Despite this, he still could not bring himself to look into her crimson eyes. They were probably understanding, kind, and all other things he didn't deserve—especially since he almost let her daughter get kidnapped.

"She'll be fine. It's a small injury. The medics said that she'll be released in a few days." She said gently.

Floors were always the safest place to look when all other places brought shame. But even that couldn't hide him from the fact that those head injuries could've been worse. If it hadn't been for that stroke of luck, he wouldn't have been able to carry her back...with that forehead protector tied on her arm...

"_See? Does it look familiar?"_

He should've told her to tie it around her forehead, like her father did. Her father, who could actually protect people. Him? He wasn't worth looking up to. Why did she smile at him like that? There was nothing about him to emulate.

_The "kings" are the unborn children who will grow up to take care of the village...Take care of my "king". _

He could barely look people in the eye.

He wasn't even a jonin.

At this rate, how was he going to protect anyone?

* * *

Once again, Shikamaru found himself in places that he hated the most. It probably would've been better for him return to his apartment, but instead he entered the sake bar. He didn't even like rowdy people. Or alcohol.

But he knew that Yamanaka Ino did.

Seeing her holding a glass with a limp hand, slouched over the counter silently trying drown herself...

He was supposed to be the laid-back kind of guy. So why was it that this woman had the ability to make him incredibly furious?

She sensed a shadow block the light above.

"Yeah. I know. I totally fucked that up didn't I?"

Caught aback by her bluntness, Shikamaru held his tongue. What burned inside him as anger threatening to escape as argument quickly dissipated when he heard the unusual lead in her voice.

"Well? That's what you came here for, right? To yell at me?" She slurred.

This was pretty much true. But he sat on the stool beside her and instead quietly asked, "Are you okay?"

"Okay? I'm fucking perfect." She laughed almost too loudly, "I'm not the one with a concussion. Or a dislocated shoulder. Or a goddamned gash on the side of my stomach."

He stared at this woman. She was talking, yet not much different from the broken puppet he saw before. "Ino..."

"I know right? Ino, it was just a shallow wound. A fucking scrape. Why couldn't you just heal it, huh Ino?! Are you shitting me?! Why couldn't you just heal the damned kid?!"

She slammed both her hands on the counter. The glasses on the cabinet rattled on impact. Her hand shoved up the strands of tangled blonde hair falling over her face, gripping tightly in frustration. The pale arm blocked his view of her face, but he noticed droplets magnify the tabletop.

"God. Why won't they go away? Nothing will go away." The words came in a whimper, hardly audible compared to the clamor in the background. But the uncharacteristic fragility of her voice shouted in his ears, "Asuma-sensei. My parents. Everyone. Even the fucking dog. They won't go. No matter what I do, they won't go."

For some reason, whenever he pictured Ino, he imagined a tall young woman in a field of flowers—probably purple cosmos. Although the meadow was thick, she would walk through with ease and her long ponytail would swing behind her in a gold trail. It was as if she knew exactly where she was going—as if there was a clear path in her sky-blue eyes.

But this woman in front of him looked lost in a barren forest. And perhaps her stripped trees were frozen tears.

He started to reach out for her, but found that his hand fell awkwardly back on the countertop. It lay there—midway between them, blocked by a glass wall of restraint. The last time this happened, they were first time drinkers who ended up taking separate paths in their respective, cold snow.

"Fuck life. Fuck me." Her shoulders shook violently in half-laughter, half-sob.

He decided to try anyway. Partially because he wanted to be the one to drop the flower in her hands again and tell her that yes, cosmos were beautiful.

And partially because he was scared of what she might do alone in such a dark evening.

Slowly, he stood up and pulled the woman's hand away from her head. "Come on." He sighed and gingerly swung both her arms around his neck. Carrying her on his back he walked out of the bar and down the streets, which were as empty as any place would be at two in the morning.

With her head buried in his shoulder, he could smell the heavy scent of alcohol in her breath.

"Hey. Shikamaru. Remember that time you dropped me in that mission?"

Of course he did. It was the first time they used their formation in battle and he didn't expect her to be that heavy. He didn't tell her that, obviously. But since she was clearly drunk at this point and wouldn't probably remember anything he said, he replied,

"Yeah. You were heavy as hell."

She giggled girlishly. And that was when he knew she really was drunk. He had thought that a woman like her would've developed a better tolerance for alcohol by now. Then of course, he did remember seeing more than four empty glasses by her side.

"Hey. Shikamaru?"

"Yeah?"

"I want to go home."

"I know. I'm taking you there."

"Alone."

He pictured her mistaking a dumpster as her bed and waking up nestled in a pile of trash bags. Then, he replied, "Uh. No."

"Hey Shikamaru?"

He sighed. "What now?"

"Lemme off."

"No."

"I don't feel too well—

Before he could tell her that he could barely understand her slurred speech, she vomited over and on his shoulder. After ten more minutes of watching her kneel over the bushes and dealing with the uncomfortable puke on his shirt, he finally reached her place. It was his intention to just set her on the bed and leave, but her fingers curled tighter around his pants.

"You have to stay...We haven't even had cake yet. And we have to sing Happy Birthday together...And maybe we'll call Chouji too..."

He looked down at the mumbling woman. From this angle, she hardly looked capable of all the pain the world burdened her with—only he noticed her tragedies entangle in her lashes in teardrops, slide down her cheeks in a streak of silver in moonlight.

The last time this happened, everything ended up torn and empty.

But he took his chances anyway.

* * *

The first wrong thing was the tiny purple splotch on the ceiling—she knew it was nail polish because she was the one who threw the bottle of Lavender Allure up into the air in surprise when a spider had crawled up her bed.

The second wrong thing was the faint smell of cigarettes underneath the blankets. The third was the bare, broad chest she saw the moment she turned around.

Everything wrong just came crashing down on her in the form of a headache. "Holy shit...holy shit. Holy shit. Holy shit."

She stood up and found herself in nothing but a bra and her underwear. That typically would not have been a problem, had the person lying on the other pillow not been none other than Nara Shikamaru.

Her muttering crescendoed into a panicked shout.

"Holy _shit_!" She yanking the blanket off to cover herself and sending him to the floor with a kick.

"Ow!" He groaned and rubbed his head from the impact. Still groggy from sleep, he clutched his forehead from the noise that stabbed his ear, "What the _hell_ was that for?!"

"What the hell was that for?! Why don't you tell me why the _fuck _here?!" She screamed.

He stared at her, incredulous. She really didn't remember a thing, did she? Watching her pace around the room, he attempted to calm her down, "Look, I just—

"Get out."

"What?"

"Get out. Get out!" She shrieked and threw the nearest, most dangerous thing she could find at him.

The glass of the picture frame shattered by his leg and he barely saved his hands from becoming bloodied up. This, in addition to the fact that he barely had enough sleep last night, was enough to tick him off.

"Jesus, will you just calm down?!

How could she calm down? Ino frantically tried to find her clothes, impeded by a tremendous, pressing headache that was magnified by her frantic thoughts.

She never slept with the same guy twice. Never. And she most certainly would never do it with a person she knew. Because that would ruin everything; how else would she keep moving and not thinking if there's a guy constantly reminding her of the past? It was as if shadows of tears and funerals and pathetic mistakes lurked about wherever she went.

"Didn't you hear me?!" She figured that the hot tears starting to stream down her cheeks were ruining the mascara she never wiped off from last night. Actually, she was sure her whole face was a mess. None of that mattered.

"Get the _fuck _out!"

Her lungs hurt. But she hoped that her loud, high-pitched scream was enough to shove her past away and give her enough room to breathe.

The moment he silently walked out the door, she felt her knees collapse from underneath. She slid down to the cold wooden floor, her back pressed against the wall as she curled herself in as small as she could.

This shouldn't be happening. She had worked so hard to escape dead faces and pointing fingers. Yet here she was, trapped in a corner, prisoner to phantoms of tragedies passed.

_She never knew that bodies could be so heavy._

_Even if she had studied anatomy under Tsunade and Sakura, neither of them ever told her how difficult it would be to carry Asuma-sensei's body back to the Konohagakure. Nobody ever told her that—although Chouji and Shikamaru were the ones who each had one of Asuma-sensei's arms slung over their shoulders—holding the lifeless, cold hand that once could make any ninjutsu possible to protect them would be almost unmanageable. That the journey back home would seem endless. That it would be impossible to stop the silent tears falling down her cheeks. _

_They told her that she couldn't have saved him. Even Tsunade agreed afterwards, when she skipped out on visiting Kurenai-sensei with her other team mates to offer her condolences. And inside, even she knew that it was hopeless while he lied on the ground with the smoke from his cigarette making its final circles. _

_So she let him say his last words. She let him tell her that she was dependable and all other praises she didn't deserve. She let him do this, all while she could've been able to heal him._

_If only she had been stronger. _

_But no matter what new medical ninjutsu she learned, there was nothing she could do about people already gone. She couldn't even find her father's body and give herself the false hope of finding him somehow just barely alive, so that she could save him and they could look back to that time as some adventurous tale. Instead, she could only sit on the wasteland and feel her father's smile leave her for the dust that blew into the wind. _

_One year later, when she walked into the family room and found her mother on the ground with an empty capsule meant to hold pills, she barely had any tears left to cry anymore. She did all she could, using all the experience she had from 14-hour shifts at the hospital. She tried expelling the poison with ninjutsu, and by the time Shikamaru and Chouji found her, she had been trying to revive her mother for so long that she came close to losing her life from chakra-overuse. When they shouted and dragged her away, she didn't even break down. It was simple; nothing she did would've work because she didn't know how to mend the loneliness in her mother's eyes whenever she placed a meal in front of her father's portrait. She didn't know anything._

_The black kimono still fitted the third time. If anything, the cloth hung looser around her body. White lilies were all she saw and crying was the same as silence to her. Even still, death frightened her. _

_She thought she only needed to become stronger. She became a jonin and worked beside high ranked medical ninja in the front lines. She saved enemies to keep for interrogation, strangers, accomplices. _

_But she couldn't save a dog._

"_I'm sorry." She whispered to her friend. Her hands were drenched in fur and blood. It was as if she had killed the dog herself._

_There was something about watching him break down that shattered her into a million, trembling pieces. She had worked all this time, only to lose her sensei, her father, her mother, and now this dog. And even after the heavy rain shower on their way back from the mission had washed her blood-matted arms, she hardly felt any cleaner. _

_By the time she arrived back to New Konohagakure, she had the weight of four bodies all on her shoulders. _

_She never knew bodies could be so heavy_

_One by one by one by one, they crushed her chest until she finally broke after her first drink. It didn't even take her an eighth of her father's old bottle of sake in the cabinet to cause her to drown in her own tears. And in the midst of being alive and feeling dead, she found a kunai and wondered what being one of her own patients would feel like. Perhaps lying in a field of red flowers would help her understand what it was like for Asuma-sensei...or even that dog._

_Only she couldn't do it. In fact, she couldn't do anything but cry because it was so incredibly cold. And the next thing she knew, she was curled up naked in Shikamaru's arms, his head rested over hers. _

_With his face that close, she could see the stubble on his chin, which reminded her of Asuma-sensei. And then she remembered that he was the same family friend who came over during the days when she still had a mother who made chrysanthemum tea and a father who, together with his father, shared adventure stories to them. _

_It scared her, to be so bare in front of anyone. Especially to this young man, who held remembrance of everything she had lost. _

_That was when she came up with the solution to healing broken hearts. So she headed for the Taiyougakure that morning without a word of goodbye, leaving the shards of her past behind in hopes of never being cut again. _

The smell of cigarettes just wouldn't leave, not even after a shower. Or buying that perfume. Or just shopping for anything she found interesting.

But neither clothes nor accessories nor makeup could fill her mind and shove that morning's scene—and scenes from weeks, ten years ago—away.

"Ino." Chouji greeted her in surprise.

She sat at the counter and breezily replied, "Hey. Hit me up."

His eyebrows furrowed in a slight, uncertain frown, "Uh...but Ino, it's only three in the afternoon..."

"So?" Her blue eyes flashed with challenge.

He meekly responded, "It's just...I don't think it's a good idea—

"Look, why don't you start acting like a bartender and just take my money?"

It that exact sharp, commanding voice that typically made him flinch. She used it whenever she found him hiding in the bushes, mercilessly scolding him for taking an extra break during training. Of course, he always listened and ended up nearly out of air, running up a hill while carrying her on his back.

"It's tough love." She would grin when he collapsed in exhaustion.

And so now it was his turn. Because even at this moment, nearly a decade since they've last trained together, he was not just a bartender and she was not just some customer.

"No. I'm not serving you." He firmly said.

"And why the fuck not? I'm not a kid, I can make my own choices."

No she wasn't the same 17 year old girl he once knew. But she was still his friend. So he quietly said, "I think you need help, Ino."

He watched her carefully, as if he were handling a ticking bomb.

Instead, she burst into laughter, as if in reaction to some sort of joke, only the tone in her voice was knife-edged, "Help? You think _I _need help? You just chop sushi all fucking day and you think _I _need help? And what do you think help is going to do? Do you want it to make the three of us hold hands and skip again? Because that sure as fuck isn't going to happen. And I'm perfectly happy as hell with that!"

"I'm still not serving you." He looked down at his feet and repeated in a small voice.

She stormed out the door. It occurred to her that she came close to talking about the past again. And there was nothing to keep the ghosts away anymore.

She had no choice but to leave.

* * *

Never in his nightmares had Shikamaru been forced to walk in public shirtless. Unfortunately, the situation wasn't even a hypothetical illusion—it was very much real and he had to use all the shortcuts he could to get back to his apartment.

That had been one of his favorite shirts too. Why didn't he think of taking it with him _before _leaving? Of course, he wouldn't have forgotten it in the first place if women weren't so crazy.

Lying with his back on the couch he held up the picture Ino had thrown at him earlier, allowing the glare of its glossy surface to blind him. This was a picture he didn't have a copy of. He had the photograph of the four of them smiling good-naturedly as they stood behind a lopsided cake. This picture was the one that was taken _after _the one he owned—after Chouji tried to grab the lighter that slipped from his hand and the camera flashed for the second time when Chouji clumsily pushed him into the cake. His ticked off expression was covered in white frosting as Chouji sheepishly apologized and Ino yelled threats. That was their second attempt at the cake, since Chouji had "sampled"—or consumed all of—the first one. All the same, Asuma-sensei had his head thrown back in laughter, probably at the fact that the 29 candles were no longer on the cake, but rather sticking out of his head.

If things were different, the three of them would try yet again to bake a cake this year. Maybe the 43 candles wouldn't be on his face...

He sat up and looked at the calendar. Staring at today's date, he came to a startling realization.

He threw on a shirt and ran over to the Yamanaka Flower Shop.

But by then, it was already too late. There were strewn mementos abandoned and left for the dust—shredded photographs, an untied forehead protector, a calendar with a hole torn in today's date: October 18th.

Asuma-sensei's 43rd birthday.

As he stood in the empty room, ravaged by an innocent eye of a tornado trying to seek solace from its own winds, he knew that Yamanaka Ino was a horrible liar. Cakes...birthday songs...Despite her words, her nonchalant attitude, she remembered everything.

And so now she had left again.

* * *

**As always, thank you for reading! And a great thanks to those of you who take the time to review :)**


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